tom
moody
Polygamy
UP & CO, New York, NY September 1999
from my blog, July 6, 2002: I drew [the La Femme Nikita ] image freehand, on a computer at work, while looking at a poster I found lying on a Metro North luggage rack and dragged back to my cube. I wasn't trying for a likeness, just a "pretty face." The hair's kind of stringy -- I think of her more as a hippie/flower child with larger-than-life Nordic features. Lots of people, especially women, can't stand that series of portraits. The fact that I showed them under the name "Polygamy" didn't help. In my own defense, I came up with that name after reading an interview with Camille Paglia. She and whoever she was talking to were defending polygamy on the grounds, basically, that it keeps men off the streets, and keeps older women in a family unit so they don't have to a join a First Wives' Club. Hey, they said it, not me! So I started thinking about the male predilection for serial affection, and our society's current obsession with child-models, and applied it to the portraits of women I was doing at the time. The art world is a fairly tolerant place, but I think I hit some taboos. You're supposed to put clear brackets around work that says "this is a critique," and I didn't. The fact that the images drew a reaction strikes me as significant, but they've created a lot of difficulty and misunderstanding in the short run.
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Polygamy
UP & CO, New York, NY September 1999
All works are MSPaintbrush drawings,
laser-printed onto 8 1/2" X 11'' paper, taped together on
the back and stapled onto standard canvas stretchers.
Posing with the art (for scale): Uscha Pohl, Ellis
Krueger.
Left: Village Voice Personals Ad; Right: La Femme
Nikita (Realistic Version)
Left: Country & Western Spice Girl 2; Right: Village
Voice Personals Ad
Left: Village Voice Hair Salon Ad; Right: Country
& Western Spice Girl 2
from my blog, July 6, 2002: I drew [the La Femme Nikita ] image freehand, on a computer at work, while looking at a poster I found lying on a Metro North luggage rack and dragged back to my cube. I wasn't trying for a likeness, just a "pretty face." The hair's kind of stringy -- I think of her more as a hippie/flower child with larger-than-life Nordic features. Lots of people, especially women, can't stand that series of portraits. The fact that I showed them under the name "Polygamy" didn't help. In my own defense, I came up with that name after reading an interview with Camille Paglia. She and whoever she was talking to were defending polygamy on the grounds, basically, that it keeps men off the streets, and keeps older women in a family unit so they don't have to a join a First Wives' Club. Hey, they said it, not me! So I started thinking about the male predilection for serial affection, and our society's current obsession with child-models, and applied it to the portraits of women I was doing at the time. The art world is a fairly tolerant place, but I think I hit some taboos. You're supposed to put clear brackets around work that says "this is a critique," and I didn't. The fact that the images drew a reaction strikes me as significant, but they've created a lot of difficulty and misunderstanding in the short run.
return to main site